Spatial personalities: a meta-analysis of consistent individual differences in spatial behavior

Individual variation in behavior, particularly consistent among-individual
differences (i.e., personality), has important ecological and evolutionary
implications for population and community dynamics, trait divergence, and
patterns of speciation. Nevertheless, individual variation in spatial
behaviors, such as home range behavior, movement characteristics, or
habitat use has yet to be incorporated into the concepts or methodologies
of ecology and evolutionary biology. To evaluate evidence for the
existence of consistent among-individual differences in spatial behavior –
which we refer to as “spatial personality” – we performed a meta-analysis
of 200 repeatability estimates of home range size, movement metrics, and
habitat use. We found that the existence of spatial personality is a
general phenomenon, with consistently high repeatability (r) across
classes of spatial behavior (r = 0.67 - 0.82), taxa (r = 0.31 - 0.79), and
time between repeated measurements (r = 0.54 - 0.74). These results
suggest: (1) repeatable spatial behavior may either be a cause or
consequence of the environment experienced and lead to spatial
personalities that may limit the ability of individuals to behaviorally
adapt to changing landscapes; (2) interactions between spatial phenotypes
and environmental conditions could result in differential reproduction,
survival, and dispersal, suggesting that among-individual variation may
facilitate population-level adaptation; (3) spatial patterns of species’
distributions and spatial population dynamics may be better understood by
shifting from a mean field analytical approach towards methods that
account for spatial personalities and their associated fitness and
ecological dynamics.